“Did you – find him?” Her voice was dead.
“I don’t think so. Not yet. It could be him in a car that burned up, but maybe not. It depends on you a lot, honey.”
“Me?”
“On your memory, anyhow,” Slabbe nodded, “Just relax. You want to help, don’t you?”
“I want to see the man who killed Jake.”
Slabbe squeezed her shoulder, returned to his reinforced chair. Casually he said: “Remember what time John Nola called Monday afternoon to tell you he’d be putting a check in the mail?”
Her hands were together in her lap. She sat stiffly, lips ragged. “It’s important, isn’t it? Then I can’t say for sure. It was about an hour after Jake went out with the blond man who limped. I think they went out about three. That would make it about four, but I can’t be sure.”
Slabbe slid his spittoon out from under his desk, dropped his gum into it. “You’ll be sure, honey,” he promised. “We’re going to make you sure. We’ll do a complete coverage, but take it easy. Don’t strain. This has to stand up in court.”
“All right,” she said dully.
Slabbe got a scratch pad handy. “Just to get organized, we’ll start with Sunday night. Where were you, honey? What did you do? What time did you get home? What time did you go to bed? Did you read or something before you fell asleep? Go ahead now. Don’t leave anything out, but don’t hurry.”
She started. There was no emotion in her voice, little interest. Slabbe was patient.
“Now for Monday morning,” he said. “Everything you did, honey. What time did you get up? Did you get right out when the alarm went off, or did you turn over for another minute?”
“I got right up. My alarm is set for seven o’clock.”
“What did you do first? What do you always do?”
“Wash—”
“OK, then what? Make your own breakfast? What did you have? What bus or streetcar did you take? Remember the driver? Remember the elevator boy at Jake’s office building who took you up? Did he say good morning? Take it, honey. You can remember every single second if you work it right.”
“Yes. I can, can’t I?”
“You bet you can,” Slabbe said. “If you get ahead of yourself don’t be afraid to go back. I’m writing it all down in order. Spit it out, honey, spit it out.”
Susie Caston went on. She spoke faster now. She began to wrinkle her brow. Her eyes got life back into them. She talked over Monday morning, every minute of it. Her voice gathering strength and interest. “It’s like living it over again, Benjie,” she said. “I can almost feel the temperature of the office that day. It was cold, I remember. There was something wrong with the radiator. I called the superintendent three times. He said he’d send a plumber up. The plumber came about three-thirty—”
“Uh-uh, not too fast,” Slabbe cut in. “We’re only at the morning yet. Don’t jump ahead. Don’t try to tell something that happened before something else. One at a time, honey, one at a time. What about lunch?”
“Twelve-thirty to one-thirty,” she responded promptly. “I walked downstairs. The elevator was on the top floor. I went out the front door, went east down Main Street, north on Fifth. I went to the Acme lunchroom. I had a grilled cheese sandwich, two olives with it, lemon sponge pie, a cup – no, two cups of cocoa. I smoked two cigarettes. Going back to the office . . .”
Slabbe filled in his chart. As nearly as possible, every minute was accounted for in chronological order.
“Yes,” Susie cried, “it was just three o’clock when that man came in, a few seconds before. I can hear the City Hall clock sometimes when the wind is right. He came in and said, ‘Where’s the boss?’ and I got up and went into Jake’s office, and the clock was striking three times. Jake looked past me into the outer office and saw the man and jumped up and yelled: ‘Come in, Lorenz; come right in. Beat it, Susie.’ But they weren’t together more than five minutes when they came out again, headed for the door. That was when Jake whispered to me: ‘I’m taking him to Nola’s home and we collect.’ ”
“On the ball now, honey,” Slabbe warned. “Keep it coming. Were you standing up or sitting down when they left? Did you look at your watch? How did you pass the time?”
“I was typing when they went out. I finished four letters. It was after three then. I wanted to get done to hear Marty and Hazel on the radio. That’s that program that’s on every day at three-thirty.”
Slabbe cut in. “How long is the program?”
“Fifteen minutes. They advertise a soap powder.”
“Did you get it on?”
“Yes. I remember, I turned it on while I was still typing, and I kept going till the announcer was done with the first commercial. Then I leaned back and listened.”
“And Nola hadn’t called yet?”
“No. The program was over. The plumber came before Mr Nola called. He came just at the end of the program with tools. And I said, ‘Don’t you start making noise till I hear this.’ He said, ‘Lady, I knock off at four o’clock, so I’ve got fifteen minutes to stop you squawking about how cold it is.’ ”
Susie’s eyes were intent now. She wasn’t in Slabbe’s office. She was back in Jake George’s office Monday afternoon at 3:45. She said: “Then the commercial started again and I told the plumber to bring the roof down if he wanted to. He went to work. I typed another letter, that took at least ten minutes. Then the telephone rang and it was Mr Nola. I yelled at the plumber: ‘Stop that for just a second please.’ And he stopped, and I talked to Mr Nola and—”
Slabbe had stopped listening. This was what he wanted. The plumber would be another witness.
“How am I doing, Benjie?” Susie asked.
“You did, baby,” Slabbe assured her. “There’s no doubt it was him, is there? You know his voice?”
“Oh, yes, I talked to him often. I’ll swear it was him.”
“And a jury will believe you, honey,” Slabbe said grimly.
“But Benjie, what’s it all about?”
“Just that it must have been five minutes to four when John Nola called you, honey, and the plane that cracked up took off at ten minutes to four.”
Susie goggled. “Well, then . . . he . . . I mean.”
“You bet.” Slabbe sat down again. “He was never on that plane.”
6. Hot and Heavy
Slabbe was again alone in his office at eleven o’clock when Charlie Somers called to say: “That big chauffeur took off in the Nola Caddy as soon as Carlin pulled his boys out. Abe Morse is tailing him.”
“That’s your shift in, then,” Slabbe said. “I’ll pay you in the a.m.”
He got City Hall on the wire, told Carlin: “Come on over, Pat. We’re gonna go places.”
Carlin arrived promptly. His dark eyes were glittering. “You told me to take Teel down just for monkey business, didn’t you?”
Slabbe shrugged apologetically. “Well, he was logical, wasn’t he? It looked good, too, and it took you and your gang away from the Nola joint so they could operate some more. That’s what they’re doing, only they have company. Abe Morse is working.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Carlin demanded.
“Just Hurst, so far,” Slabbe said. “Drink some beer. I don’t think he’ll be going far, but we gotta wait for Abe to put him in somewhere and get to a phone. How did Ione Nola take it when you let it out that Teel was Ruby’s hubby?”
Carlin folded his long form into a chair, grimaced. “It was touch and go. I didn’t know for a second whether she’d claw my eyes out or fold up and we’d have to send for a nut doctor.”
“Uh-huh?” Slabbe was interested.
“It hit her hard, all right. Her face started to bust up. Then the old lady, Miss Yates, did a Marines to the rescue and started telling her that she loved Teel, didn’t she, and the charges against him were preposter-something, and here was where her love was going to be tested, and like that.”
“And Ione pulled out of it?”
C
arlin nodded. “Yep. She’s more nuts about the guy than ever. Dames are nuts.”
“You braced Teel with the Caddy being at Lilac Lake Monday night?”
“Sure. He wouldn’t talk. He has the oldest face on a guy of twenty-seven I ever saw.”
“He has good reason to, I’d say,” Slabbe mused. “Murders going on around him, on his account, and him not having much, if anything to do with them, but still needing to keep his lip buttoned.”
Carlin leveled a finger longer and bonier than his nose at Slabbe. “Just let’s hear you explain this.”
The phone rang.
Slabbe grinned. “You’ll get it on a platter.” He answered the phone. Abe Morse’s husky voice said: “Benjie? I put this chauffeur into a cabin up here at Lilac Lake. I’m down the road at a gas station. He’s alone and he put a pot of coffee on the stove, so I took a chance on phoning.”
“Slide back there, but don’t let him get his mitts on you, kid. He didn’t go there just to drink coffee. We’ll be up. How do we make the right cabin?”
“Turn left at the breast of the dam, left again a hundred yards on. It’s a big log place, all by itself. My jalopy’ll be off in a little grove of pine trees.”
Slabbe hung up. “OK Leftenant,” he told Carlin. They drove to Lilac Lake, left at the breast of the dam, left again a hundred yards on. There wasn’t much moon, no stars. The air off the black-looking water was chill. Slabbe’s breath made frosty clouds when he said, “There’s the pine grove,” and swung ponderously to peer.
Carlin eased the departmental sedan off the road. The tires made whispering sounds on pine needles, a winter old. They found Abe Morse’s car, but not Abe. They prowled ahead on foot, found the cabin, a solid two-story structure in the log cabin tradition, but with nothing phony about the logs. The place was a fort.
“The caddy’s gone,” Slabbe frowned. “Cripes, I hope Hurst didn’t clip Abe.”
“I hope you get your hope,” Carlin grunted. “No lights inside now. No coffee, I can smell. When these trees get full of leaves, I’ll bet it’s black as hell in here.”
Slabbe squeezed the lieutenant’s arm for silence – and got it, complete silence, with only the intangible, non-noise sound of a large body of water nearby.
“Take a chance on a light for a second, Pat,” Slabb suggested. “The road’s dirt. Ought to be tire marks.”
“Yeah,” Carlin said a second later. “Car came in, didn’t go out.”
“He made coffee and drove on past the cabin, huh?” Slabbe said. “Suppose I slip down on foot and you go back for the sedan?”
It wasn’t necessary. A shadow darker than the rest glided up to them. Abe Morse’s husky voice said: “He’s about a quarter of a mile down the road. He’s looking for something in a gully off to the right. I got the distributor cap off the Caddy. Was that right?”
“It wasn’t wrong.” Slabbe chuckled.
“Looking for something in a gully?” Carlin scowled. “What the hell for?”
“A body, is my guess,” Slabbe said. He went ahead, faster now. Carlin cursed and stumbled. “Give me a good concrete city street,” he complained. “What’s that?”
“Tree toads in the woods,” Abe Morse husked. “An owl over there in that chestnut tree. See it?”
“The tree or the owl?” Carlin said sarcastically. “I wouldn’t know one from the other.”
Alan Hurst’s flashlight was suddenly a giant white firefly below them to the right. He was in a gully fifty feet deep, fifty yards across, that ran beside the road. Slabbe squatted and pulled Carlin down beside him so that their silhouettes did not stand out.
“It’s not so steep going down from here, but look at the other side,” he said. “It’s a face of rock. He’ll have to come back up this way or cut left or right down there and plough a hundred yards before he can break clear. How about one of you guys at each end? I’ll go down right here.”
Abe Morse slipped away without question. Carlin spat and burped, but finally loped off. Slabbe went down, crab-style, feet first on his heels, palms and beam. The chauffeur’s flash was swinging methodically, covering every square foot of the undergrowth as he worked through the gully. He found what he was looking for just as Slabbe came up behind him.
Hurst was breathing fast, but stopped and gave a little grunt of triumph as his flash centered on his find: a man’s body. The man was on his back. His clothing showed that he’d been out in the weather for days. Slabbe recognized his features: Jake George.
Hurst hesitated no longer. He caught the man’s arm, started to lift him as easily as a sack of feathers. He stopped, frowned, let the arm go again. He picked up a basketball-sized rock, poised it over the dead man’s pasty face.
Slabbe said: “Don’t do it, son.”
It was a mistake. Slabbe was shambling forward, but he shouldn’t have spoken. Or he should at least have clipped Hurst first.
The chauffeur swung easily, smoothly, catlike, and shot-putted his rock at the first thing he saw moving, which was Slabbe. Man, beast or devil smacking into Slabbe once he was under way would have come off second best, but not rock. It took him on the left shoulder and let him know about it. It stopped him, swung him with more, though less localized push, than a .45 Colt slug. He spun so that his back was toward Hurst when the chauffeur cut his flash and leaped away.
Slabbe closed his teeth against the pain, lurched around and shambled after Hurst. The chauffeur’s longer legs made it an uneven contest. He was twenty yards ahead of Slabbe and gaining.
Slabbe opened his mouth to shout to Carlin and Abe Morse, but decided against it. If Hurst knew there were reinforcements handy, he might go to earth in the undergrowth. As it was, he was certainly trying for the Caddy – which was now without a distributor cap.
Slabbe tried for the car, too. Since he had just come down, while Hurst had been here for a while, he was a bit better oriented. When he started clawing up the slope to the road, he was sure he was lined up with the Caddy, while Hurst, off to the right, would have to run back this way once he made the road.
Slabbe’s left hand and arm were numb. His right hand tore on the rocks he clutched at, felt warm and sticky. The slope was just a blur, he could have closed his eyes and made just as good time. He heard the scrambling sliding sound made by rocks and dislodged earth by both himself and his quarry. His lungs were bellows sucking air through his open mouth, drying his lips and tongue and throat till he wanted to gag. He rolled over the hump and was on the road again. Hurst’s footfalls were approaching, thumping on the dirt. Slabbe peered for the dark shape of the Caddy. He saw double – but it was no illusion. There were two cars there. Headlights slashing suddenly into the night proved it. A tinkling voice proved it. In Fudge Burke’s place the voice had sounded clearly as tiny bells in a fine Swiss watch. Out here, with sky and trees to background it, it was a carillon.
“Here, Alan!” it cried. “In here! Quickly!”
7. Fire to the Finish
Hurst could have made it – but didn’t. It wasn’t his lungs or his legs that gave out. It was his heart. One second he was running freely in a long, loping stride. The next he lurched. The next after, he crumpled.
Slabbe was down on one knee. He shifted his gun from its line on where Hurst had been to the tires of the car with the blazing headlights. But that wasn’t necessary either. Miss Yates was not leaving, she was hurrying to Alan Hurst. Slabbe saw her kneel beside him. Her bonnet had fallen off and her white hair was silvery in the wash of the automobile headlights. There was no need for Slabbe to hurry.
When he had dusted himself off, righted his hat and swabbed blood from his right hand, he went over. Miss Yates was rising. She trembled a little.
“Dead?” Slabbe asked.
She nodded, turned. Slabbe took her arm. “I think there’s coffee in the cabin. Who owns the place?”
“It was John Nola’s. We thought we could intimidate that detective, Jake George, or buy him off if we held him a prisoner here for a
while, but when Alan talked to the man Monday night, he saw there was only one way.”
Slabbe nodded. “So Hurst and Ike Veech killed Jake, put the body in Veech’s car and Veech drove down here to the gully and dumped it in. They didn’t think then that it would be found soon or that it would make much difference, anyhow. Let’s go into the cabin.”
She offered no resistance. The only sound was the rustling of her black taffeta skirt and Slabbe’s breathing coming back to normal.
There was a smell of coffee inside the cabin. Slabbe hesitated, then saw that she was through, and went to the kitchen. He brought coffee back to where she sat in front of a huge fieldstone fireplace. Her pale face was as unruffled as her fine white hair, but her hands twitched ever so slightly.
Slabbe said: “It was all for love of Ione. M’m, and hate of Nola probably.”
The voice did not tinkle now, it was too low. “I did hate John Nola. I loved him at first and even after he married my sister and Prentice was born. Then he said that he still loved me. Ione is my child, mine and his. Knowing it practically killed John’s wife, my sister, but even after she was dead he wouldn’t marry me – perhaps it was because she died over our affair. So then I hated him.”
“Love and hate,” Slabbe said. “They complicate things. You wanted Ione to marry Bill Teel?”
“Yes.”
“Even though you must have learned or guessed that he was phony?”
Serena Yates lifted her chin. “When Bill Teel brought life to my daughter’s eyes again after the months she spent in a crazy dream world of grief and escape, I knew he was good for her. I wouldn’t have cared if he were a freak – but he isn’t. He became infatuated with a girl once, a Ruby Reed, and married her and she enticed him into a criminal enterprise. He learned from his mistake. I’ve watched him these past months, and he’s building solidly and honestly for a good life.”
“Only John Nola couldn’t see him?” Slabbe said.
The old woman’s black smooth eyes were venomous. “John Nola thought people are black or white, with no in-between. Teel was all bad or all good. John said all bad, and he had a strange, perverse love of Ione. He didn’t want her to marry a criminal. The fool was so insensitive that in spite of knowing what he’d done to me he scoffed at the notion that betrayal by a loved one can make a woman warped and bitter, if not actually mad. I know it can,” she said bitingly. “Ione had transferred everything she’d felt for her first boy to Bill. If he had let her down—”
The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction Page 44